Jeff Smith (born February 27, 1960)

Early life

Smith was born on February 27, 1960, in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio.

Smith learned about cartooning through comic strips, comic books, and animated TV shows. The strip he found to be the most entertaining was Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts. His father read it to him every Sunday, and it inspired him to learn to read. Smith was also inspired by Scrooge McDuck creator Carl Barks, and refers to Kelly as his "biggest influence in writing comics".

Smith graduated in 1978 from Worthington High School in Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, where he was a classmate of Jim Kammerud. Later on, in 1986, Smith and Kammerud co-founded Character Builders, an animation studio in Columbus where Smith worked until 1992. After high school, Smith attended the Ohio State University, and while there he created a comic strip called Thorn for the student newspaper, The Lantern, which included some of the characters who later featured in the Bone series. He also studied animation.

In 1994 Smith created an original cover for Dan DeBono's Indy: The Independent Comic Guide (issue 13), and was interviewed to help to promote his and other alternative comics. Two additional volumes, Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails and Rose, collect a number of Bone prequel comics created by Smith and his collaborators.

In 1995 French publisher Delcourt acquired the rights to translate Bone into French. The translator of the first four French volumes was Alain Ayroles who would be inspired by Smith's storytelling and go on to write the successful Garulfo series, among others.

In 2003, Smith began work for DC Comics on a miniseries starring Captain Marvel, a superhero of which Smith is a fan. The series, entitled Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, was published in four prestige format issues in 2007, and later collected into a hardcover edition.

In 2007, Fantagraphics Books named Smith as the designer for an upcoming series of books collecting the complete run of Walt Kelly's Pogo. He also designed the cover art for Say Anything's album In Defense of the Genre.

Smith released the first issue of RASL, "a stark, sci-fi series about a dimension-jumping art thief with personal problems", in February, 2008. A six-page preview was shown on the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con. Originally intending RASL to be released in an oversized format, Smith consulted with retailers who unanimously cautioned him against the unconventional size. Smith later self-published RASL as a standard-sized, ad-free, black and white comic book. The first trade paperback, titled The Drift, is in stores in the originally intended oversized format.

Smith's art was featured in a pair of museum shows in Columbus in mid-2008: "Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond" at the Wexner Center for the Arts, and "Jeff Smith: Before Bone" at the Cartoon Research Library of Ohio State University. The exhibits were featured in a segment on the PBS news program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on July 21, 2008.

In 2009, Smith was featured in The Cartoonist: Jeff Smith, BONE, and the Changing Face of Comics, a documentary film on his life and work.

In September that same year, Toon Books, the children's book line launched by cartoonist Art Spiegelman and New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly, released Little Mouse Gets Ready, a 32-page children's graphic novel written by Smith and aimed at very young "emerging readers". In a February 2009 Newsarama interview, Smith noted that the book featured another character Smith created in his childhood, "a little gray mouse with a little red vest".

In March 2013, Smith said his next project would be a webcomic series called Tüki: Save the Humans, which tells the story of the first human to leave Africa. The web publication began in November 2013 and the print version was first released in July 2014. The fourth issue was delayed due to a hand injury, sustained by Smith, but after its release in February 2016 the series was put on hiatus in June 2016 due to the need to rework the strip.

From 2013 to 2018, Smith served on the board of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a non-profit organization founded in 1986 chartered to protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.

Smith helped found the annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus festival, which debuted in 2015. He serves as artistic director of the convention.

Personal life

Smith lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and business manager, Vijaya Iyer.

On August 13, 2023, Smith suffered a cardiac arrest. As a result, the remainder of his book tour was cancelled.

Awards and accolades

For his work on Bone, Smith has received numerous awards, among them ten Eisner Awards and eleven Harvey Awards. In 1995 and 1996 he won the National Cartoonists Society's award for Comic Books.

In 2022 Tuki: Fight for Fire was included in the American Library Association's list of the Best Graphic Novels for Adults Reading List.

Eisner Awards

  • 1993 Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication
  • 1994 Eisner Award for Best Serialized Story (for "The Great Cow Race"; Bone #7-11)
  • 1994 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series
  • 1995 Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist—Humor
  • 2005 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint (for Bone One Volume Edition)
  • 2014 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: Reprint (for RASL)

Harvey Awards

  • 1994 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 1994 Harvey Award Special Award for Humor
  • 1996 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 1997 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 1999 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist), for his body of work in 1998, including Bone
  • 2000 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 2003 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 2005 Harvey Award for Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist)
  • 2005 Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work: Bone: One Volume Edition
  • 1998 Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series
  • 2005 Eisner Award for Best Comics Publication for a Younger Audience

References

  • WelcomeToBoneville.com—unofficial Jeff Smith/Bone community forum
  • Robinson, Tasha (May 31, 2000). "Interview: Jeff Smith". The A.V. Club.
  • Burns, Ian (April 29, 2010). "RASL #1–7 review by Ian Burns". The Comics Journal.